Talk:Henry Percy, 11th Duke of Northumberland

Excessive and adventurous drug taking

I've received a complaint on my talk page from one User:Amandajm as follows:

Your addition to the article: "..... and for excessive and adventurous drug taking" was out of order, because there is no reference that backs this up. You have inserted a reference in which the Duchess uses the term "drugs" to describe Harry's medication. She doesn't suggest anything resembling "adventurous drug taking".

Harry Percy did indeed abuse prescription medicine, and experiment with various medications to try and relieve his symptoms, but to refer to him as "being known for ......adventurous drug taking" requires some serious back-up.

Amandajm (talk) 09:23, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The "serious back-up" to support the sentence you've removed is in the Lynn Barber Observer article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2003/aug/03/features.magazine37 as follows:

• We get "Excessive" from the sentences: 'He chainsmoked to the point of absurdity. The glass in his hand was drained as soon as it was filled. His face was coursed with rivulets of sweat.' That sounds excessive to me.
• We get "Adventerous" from the sentence: " The danger was that he'd become a bit of a drug expert himself, so he was finding new drugs, experimenting with things that he thought would make him feel better." That sounds adventerous to me.

Oh, and of course his drug experimentation was directly responsible for his death.

You could argue that I should have written "excessive and experimental". But our job is to paraphrase, and that was the paraphrase I chose. You, by contrast, decided the better thing to do would be to whitewash all of this from the article, despite the clarity of the source. Very poor decision.

You go on to assert in your RV subject line It is clear that when Harry's rather vague sister-in-law refers to him taking drugs for relief that she means "prescription medicines". She elsewhere says "medicine". It's only your opinion that Jane is being vague. I do not share that opinion, and anyone who has met her would tell you that vague is the last thing she is; it rather looks like you're trying to denigrate her so as to support your weak argument ... if so, that's a rather low stoop. And it matters not if he was experimenting with prescription drugs or non-prescription drugs. They're all still drugs, and they still killed him just as stone dead. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:09, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I am not trying to "denigrate" anyone, least of all the Duchess. I think that her description may have been, at the least, rather poorly expressed.

"Adventurous" is your adjective. What Harry was doing doesn't sound like too much of an "adventure" to me! Maybe you have reason to perceive his excessive use of alcohol, cigarettes and combination of prescriptive drugs (or whatever) as "adventurous" but I am certain that you could come up with a more suitable description.

Amandajm (talk) 10:26, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

A more "suitable" description. Suited to what, I wonder. I don't know what your conception of an adventure is. I tend to think that someone picking and choosing from amongst 'legal' and illegal drugs to suit his mood and disposition, and doing so in such an excessive manner as to cause his own death is being adventerous. But I'm open to suggestions, if you have any. Possibly it would be useful for you to read the lead paragraph of adventure and to ask youself whether the Duke's risky life-long undertaking fits within the broad description you see there. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:22, 2 November 2012 (UTC)